Google teaming up with small deal sites

Published 4:00 am, Friday, October 28, 2011

Arash Ferdowsi, left, and Drew Houston, seen on Thursday, April 14, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif., are the founders of Dropbox.

Arash Ferdowsi, left, and Drew Houston, seen on Thursday, April 14, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif., are the founders of Dropbox.

Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle

Google teaming up with small deal sites

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Google's push into local commerce continued Thursday, as the Mountain View company introduced an expanded daily deals service in San Francisco.

Google Offers was created earlier this year after the company was rebuffed in its efforts to acquire Groupon. Like that site, Offers gives subscribers steep discounts on everything from empanadas to adventure kayaking trips.

Google is also unveiling a "personalization quiz" that lets people pick and choose the kind of deals they want to see.

"During this quiz, we'll ask you for information about the types of deals you like, as well as where you live, work and hang out," product manager Nitin Mangtani said in a blog post.

Integrated deals are available now in San Francisco. Offers is now in 17 cities, having added sites for San Jose, San Diego, Minneapolis and Baltimore this week.

Secret code among friends: If you've ever found yourself locked out of your Facebook account, you'll know how difficult it can be to get back in. So Facebook is working on a social-networking way to recover access to your account with the help of your best friends.

Facebook is testing a security tool that will send parts of a special code to three to five of your most "trusted friends," otherwise known as your cyber "guardian angels." If you forget your password or otherwise can't get into your account, they will receive the code.

"It's sort of similar to giving a house key to your friends when you go on vacation," according to the Facebook Security blog. "Pick the friends you most trust in case you need their help in the future."

But as the Grail Knight once told Indiana Jones, you must choose wisely. Those five won't be able to break into your account, but you don't want to have to go on a long quest to find them, because you'll have to gather all parts of the code for it to work.

You can replace a friend at any time, say if you picked a significant other who has just become an ex.

Also, Facebook plans to introduce a way to add passwords for individual third-party apps.

"This is especially helpful if you have opted into Login Approvals, for which security codes don't always work when using third party applications," the company said.

There will be an "Apps Passwords" section in the Security tab under Account Settings that you can use to generate a password to use in addition to the overall password.

Dropbox expanding to businesses: Cloud sync service Dropbox has been unstoppable this year, nearly doubling its user base to more than 45 million people and raising $250 million to accelerate its expansion plans. On Thursday, the San Francisco startup, which began life catering to consumers, is announcing a new service aimed at small and midsize businesses.

Dropbox Teams, which has been operating in a limited beta, is officially open for business. It comes in response to demand from companies that are using Dropbox as a collaboration tool. And while Dropbox's first effort is aimed at smaller companies, it's not hard to imagine them eventually serving large enterprises and competing with the likes of Box and even Microsoft SharePoint.

The reason is that, with the rise of smart phones and tablets, the distinction between consumer and enterprise software is crumbling. And with tens of millions of people already using Dropbox for work, the company has a large and rapidly growing potential customer base.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston admits to some hand-wringing over whether the company should position itself as a consumer or enterprise business, before finally deciding that the distinction didn't matter.

"You don't have an enterprise laptop or a consumer laptop - you use the same device in a home or work context," Houston said. "That's how we think about it. In your Dropbox, you'll have baby photos next to your tax returns next to your company presentation."

Dropbox lets users access files on a number of devices. It operates as a kind of "magic folder" - save a file in Dropbox on your work PC, and you'll be able to access it from your smart phone, from a Web browser at a friend's place, or your Mac at home.

Dropbox lets you share folders and exchange files easily, and its this function that Teams takes advantage of.

The service starts at $795 a year for five people, and $125 per additional user. It comes with at least 1,000 gigabytes of shared storage, but Dropbox will provide more storage at no extra charge as long as the request is "reasonable," the company said.

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